


Break and Repair

by SkySamuelle



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 06:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/439957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkySamuelle/pseuds/SkySamuelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bonnie learns to deal with a traumatic experience, and this gets Damon to look back on certain old behaviors of his with new eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Break

**Author's Note:**

> Warning:you might find this one disturbing. It is a dark story.
> 
> Spoilers: vague spoilers for season 2, up to 2.11.
> 
> AN: Written for theangelunknown at the Five Acts Meme on her act 1 - Abuse.

Bonnie never liked math much, ever since she was a little girl. So when the Klaus crisis arises and she needs to exercise and hone her powers more, math is the very first subject she falls behind in.

Professor Rainer is a cordial, fifty-something year-old man: not particularly handsome but charming, and Caroline used to have an awful crush on him. Fortunately he was very understanding after Grams died and Bonnie took her leave from school to stay with Aunt Rachel, with the result of her paper marks suddenly dropping all around.

Professor Rainer is her math teacher, and he is brilliant at what he does – when he gives her a little advice about improving her grades in his discipline, Bonnie feels nearly guilty for not being more interested. School simply stopped being something important and started to feel more and more like something that is getting in the way of her 'real' life, the supernatural one where everyone is in danger all the time and she needs to stay prepared.

So when he asks her to stay after hours to get some much necessary extra credit and make up for her last disastrous paper, Bonnie just inwardly cringes and goes along with it. Mr. Rainer is gentle with her, gets her to talk about how hard it is to live without Grams who was her rock in this world, stuck with a father too often absent and a mother who forgot her very existence, and two best friends who require too much looking after. When he squeezes her shoulder in solidarity, Bonnie feels understood and taken care of for once, so she smiles brilliantly at her teacher and is much more willing to face up to the issue of her dropping grades.

After all, he is the first person in long, long time to inquire about her well-being. He has asked every question she wanted her father to ask after Grams was gone, and this makes her grateful.

When he asks if she has a boyfriend in the middle of it, she doesn't feel particularly uncomfortable, thinking Mr. Rainer is trying to detect if she has been distracted by anything other than the abrupt changes in her life.

So she shakes her head, dismisses his concerns about Luka Martin and Jeremy Gilbert and says they are just friends.

She is unprepared for his next question, pronounced in a somehow skeptical tone: "But you do like boys, right?"

It leaves her feeling slightly offended, awkward, and insecure. There's nothing wrong with being a lesbian – her cousin Christabel is one, and she and Bonnie were close despite the wide age gap and the living very far from each other- but it's demeaning to think that just being boyfriend-less is warrant for this kind of questioning. Is this _really_ how other people see her?

She blinks the uncertainty away, mumbles a startled 'yes' and freezes on the spot as a calloused hand curls a straying lock of her dark hair behind her ear. Warning bells are echoing loudly inside her head and her green eyes widen as a thumb runs slightly on her lips. The touch leaves her lips tingling but whole her body goes still, rigid, cold. Even her mind feels empty.

"Do you like this?" he asks and she can't answer at all. She is not thinking, she is not feeling. At all. She is just cold and it's like her soul went somewhere else.

When he gets closer she frets, tries to back away. "This is not appropriate," she says, scrambling away from her seat, trying to re-establish the natural course of this meeting.

Professor Rainer follows her as she tries to slowly back toward the classroom door. She notices that he is moving in a peculiar fashion – circling around her, avoiding the large window by the left side of the room. For a moment she wonders if he is a vampire, but then she dismisses the idea at once. He's a whole other kind of predator, and he is making it so he can get in her close proximity again, but without the risk that someone can see them through the window. For some reason, this chills her.

"Forget if it's appropriate or not. Did you enjoy it?"

There's a flicker of ill-disguised annoyance under the forced pleasantry in his tone, like he's getting irritated with her refusal to not go along with his desires.

' _Don't anger him. Don't use your powers. He can make your life a living hell and you can't afford that. Not now,' s_ uggests a voice inside her head, as the disconnected feeling between her body and her soul increases. It's almost like it's happening to somebody else, and it fits because there's still a part of herself that refuses to believe that this is real.

"Sure, but it was _not_ appropriate."

It may sound stupid but it's all that makes sense to her in this moment and she doesn't quite understand why it doesn't make sense to him in the same way.

Rainer gets two steps from her and Bonnie is suddenly overwhelmed by how much taller and larger than her he is. She fights hard to get a fresh wave of panic under control as he leans over, kissing her, grasping her even while she is walking slowly backwards.

"Are you afraid?" he smiles affably, caressing her arm because she is shaking hard.

"No," she says, but she sounds terrified, and he can't _not_ notice. "You're the same age as my daughter," he adds, like this is supposed to make her feel better when it only makes her sick instead.

Pushing him off as he keeps trying to force his lips on hers is not easy – he is stronger, heavier. Her back hits the door and Bonnie grabs on the handle, tries to turn it just to discover the door is locked.

' _When did he do it?_ ' she wonders, because she didn't see it. Fortunately the keys are dangling from the lock.

"Don't play hard to get," he mutters in between forcing her chin up and pressing his lips against hers again.

It's his impatience that finally snaps Bonnie out of her apathy and into full rage mode. The window glass shatters in one loud explosion of glass splinters at pretty much the same time that her power pushes the damn pervert off her.

She can hear voices on the other side of the door as she gets it open. "Touch me again and I'm reporting you," she threatens, eyes blazing at the man kneeling on the floor. The scared expression on his face allows her to see that being reported is not exactly his main concern.

This pleases her and she needs to have more of it. She needs to feel safe within her skin again.

Something cuts the skin of his hand and face – vertical cuts, perfectly symmetrical. Later, Rainer will tell that it was flying pieces of glass that hurt him. Bonnie will know better.

She gets home feeling pleased with herself – she protected herself, hopefully with no unpleasant consequences.

 _Nothing happened._ – she repeats inwardly – _I'm all right. I fought back._

Still, it bugs her that she can stand up to vampires and other monsters all time only to freeze and get tongue-tied around a measly high-school teacher. She should be stronger than that.

She should not have talked so freely with that teacher. If he took certain liberties with her, surely something she has done or said gave him the impression that he could get away with it. Or that she could have liked the attention.

Ben had said something like that when he kidnapped her, had he not? He had insinuated that she was easy to get because she wanted desperately to be noticed. Was it... true?

Bonnie shakes her head, wishing she could get free of the stray thought just as easily.

She still remembers how Grams had comforted her in between the kidnapping and the preparation for the Tomb opening.

" _Never do this, sweetheart. Never let a man to convince you that something like this is your fault. If it seems so easy to believe right now, it's only because your mind is fighting to assert your control on the situation. Unless it's your mistake, it's something you can fix so it won't happen again. It doesn't make it real, Bonnie. Deep down, you know it. You just trusted the wrong person."_

Apparently trusting the wrong person is a mistake Bonnie is fond of repeating.

She brushes her teeth five times before feeling the sour taste on her lips disappear, but her agitation is merely growing and the witch is crying hard into her pillow before she knows it.

There's an endless list of wrongs she filed against herself. She is a witch after all; she should recognize certain dangers before they are on her. For the same reason, she should have done something, anything, differently. She had acted like she was fucking helpless and she is not.

There' s no Grams to confide in this time around, and confiding in Elena means that anything Elena knows, Stefan and Damon will know soon too. Confiding in her dad means reporting Rainer and while this would normally be the right thing to do, she had used her powers on him and the last thing she needs is drawing attention on that. Confiding in Caroline means risking that Caroline drains the pervert: she already made her friend a vampire – she won't make her a murderer too. Not again.

So really, the one option is keeping this little secret to herself.

 _It won't be all that hard_ – Bonnie reflects- _after all, nothing really happened .It's not like he raped me._

* * *

She doesn't go to school for two days straight, claiming she caught a cold.

She is strangely afraid to leave the house, and her powers are in complete disarray.

Mugs break, objects levitate on no notice and her mind keeps drifting back to that classroom. The more she thinks of it, the more she suspects it was not the first time Rainer harassed a student.

His actions had nothing tentative – and if she was not the first one, maybe she won't be the last.

Which is not acceptable at all.

So she takes action, studies her due on Emily's and Sheila's Grimoires and writes her first spell. She shapes Rainer's figure within a wax block and curses him, binding him to never force himself on anyone, female or male again. If he even tries, his body will respond with a seizure.

This makes Bonnie feel more like her usual self, and it in turn gives her backbone to leave the house again.

The first day out she coddles herself with shopping: she buys casual dresses modest but flattering to her form, tight jeans and shirts. It won't be until weeks after that she will feel safe wearing them, but hanging them in her closet in the meantime made her feel better. Less like a victim and more like a brave person.

Her life goes on. Rainer doesn't bother her again and her marks in math jump up dramatically but Bonnie doesn't feel victorious, just angry. Every time she spots him in passing or is forced to listen to his lessons, she feels a murderous rage boiling up. The memories are there, whispering in the back of her mind, and there's a tendril of the old, despicable fear - the fear of every woman for a man who tried to violate her.

Bonnie can't accept being scared, because her mantra is that there was no violation. This man tried to humiliate and intimidate her into accepting his advances, but it wasn't rape.

And she wasn't a victim, not really. She hurt him back. She stopped him from hurting another girl. It should be enough. Bonnie needs for it to be enough because she has too many other issues to look after – the werewolf problem, the Klaus problem, the Elena obsession with getting herself sacrificed and the deal with Elijah.

It's not the right time to have a breakdown over a problem that she has already solved. So she should be calm and collected on this front at least.

Yet… there's this deep, instinctual part of her that can't let go of this offense. Can't forget that someone (somebody human, someone who claimed to want to help her) considered her a thing, not a person. Somebody _human_ fed on her fear, got off on cornering her into something she never wanted, acted like she was wrong if she wanted nothing of it at all.

This is monstrous and evil and it kills her innocence so much more than knowing vampires are real.

* * *

She starts to date Jeremy because he makes her feel safe. When she looks into his brown eyes, she sees tenderness and admiration and respect. When he looks at her, Bonnie knows he sees only the most heroic, beautiful side of her. In the supernatural world and in their most ordinary days, they have each other's back and that is in itself a wonderful security, a treasure she has not had in long, long time. When they make love, whether she is under him or above him, she always feels in control. In and out of the bedroom, Jeremy Gilbert treats her like something precious and incredibly rare.

Bonnie doesn't mind that his feelings for her are coming from a dark place of loss inside him. Love is love, regardless of its reasons or origins and they both need it so much.

If she doesn't tell him about the accident with Rainer, it's because there's no reason to upset him. She only wants to spare him from the anger she has experienced.

* * *

It comes as a surprise when Damon Salvatore is the very first person she tells _that old story_ to.

In her defense, Bonnie can say she was tipsy and well on her way to being drunk. She has been lingering around the bar stool of the Mystic Grill after a discretely public breakup with Jeremy. He told her that their problems during the last month came back to the fact that she was emotionally available only up to a certain point, and she insisted that he had already had his eye on a certain water-nymph that recently moved into town.

The truth is that they are both right, and although the decision to take some time apart didn't come with any resentments or senses of betrayal, there's still a hurt Bonnie is in the mood to nurse with alcohol.

How Damon ends up sitting beside her whole the night is a mystery, but once he offered to share his bottle of vodka, Bonnie stopped caring and started bantering.

How she came to confessing about the 'Rainer incident' is probably related to her guilt over being emotionally unavailable to her perfectly devoted boyfriend.

"What I don't understand," the witch drawls, the way only drunks know how to do, "is why inside my head I feel like this. He didn't rape me. But some part of me feels like he did."

Damon's expression as he looks at her sideways, filling her glass again more out of habit than anything else, is oddly furrowed.

"Do you want me to kill him for you?" he asks, a bit more heatedly than she would expect. They are nowhere close to being friends or to having each other's best interests at heart.

"No," she snorts, feeling just the slightest bit tempted to say the opposite.

"Then why are you saying this _to me_? I'm not into counseling. That's Stefan's hobby. Call him."

Bonnie smiles dazedly. "It's cute of you to want his backup."

"I don't. I'm just saying he's more… estrogen-equipped than me for this conversation. "

The dazed smile curls into a full-blown smirk. "Don't panic. I'm not looking for comfort either. I was just… blowing out some steam. "

"Good," the vampire nods, looking somehow contrite as he stares straight ahead. Bonnie studies his profile as he sips on his drink while she starts thinking in circles again, and it's so tiring to have those questions constantly on the back of her mind that she can't help voicing them.

"I just don't get it: how can a man take pleasure in taking from a woman a body she doesn't want to give him?"

Damon swirls his drink, studiously unaffected. "How should I know? I'm not a serial woman abuser."

Bonnie's answering giggle is bitter and sarcastic and so transparent that even Damon can't shut it out of his consciousness.

"What?" he inquires, turning toward her with a rather annoyed set of his eyebrows.

"You used to do it all the time, compelling girls for sex and blood."

"It's not the same," he snaps, and by his offended tone and the set of his mouth she almost thinks he cares about her opinion.

"You take away their ability to say 'no' in order to get what you want. It's _exactly_ the same. The fact that you manage to force them to either enjoy it or to forget it doesn't make it better. It might make it worse."

Damon gets abruptly off his seat, glaring at her. "Whatever, witch. I don't even do that anymore."

Bonnie shrugs, hardly impressed. "Right now you're focused on Elena and you want a chance at something real with her. Not quite a noble motivation, is it?"

The vampire slams his money on the barstool, grits out a 'Judgmental as ever' aimed in her direction accompanied by a fancy glare, and then stalks away.

Bonnie scowls as she stares at his retreating back, slightly insulted by Damon's hissy fit and over-dramatic exit. So he sat there and listened to her woes and possibly tried to comfort her in his bizarre way - why should this preclude her from expressing negative opinions over anything he has done or will do?

She just told him the truth, and if he didn't like it, he had only himself to blame for the outcome of his actions.

Yet… she smiles absently, wondering if Damon is angry enough to go and take it out on Rainer, regardless of her refusal of his generous offer. It's a nice thought, the image of vampire fangs tearing her professor's throat apart. Or vampire strength tearing his body apart, piece to piece, like the animal he actually is.

She can't justify killing the pig to herself, but she's not quite hypocritical enough to deny that she kind of wants him dead, finished. She hates the figment of herself that still shivers every time she walks into class, hates that even if she won her battle with threats and curses, it still feels like she lost.

But if Rainer died tonight, it would be perfect. She would have nothing to force her to remember daily that ugly, ugly moment of her life.

She might just … move on.

Bonnie eyes the door, knowing she should rush through it, go after Damon and make sure he doesn't do anything unnecessary. But her stomach turns at the idea of saving Rainer's life.

His actions toward her had not been humane, so why should she be the bigger person and treat him like he is a man and not a sick, disgusting pervert?

He treated her like a _thing_ , screwed up her entire way of thinking.

If being a hero means being respectful of scum like that, Bonnie decides she is better off doing herself the favor of simply being human.

So she shrugs off the question of whatever Damon might or might not do and smiles at the bartender, asking for more gin.

It's not like Damon cares that much about her opinion, anyway.

* * *

The next morning Rainer is absent from his lessons.

They find parts of his corpse-an arm, a foot in the river- the following week. Nobody suspects Damon but Bonnie and of course the very first thing she does is go to the boarding house. He doesn't deny anything, because Stefan and Elena are not around.

"You don't get to make me an accomplice in your killing sprees. If I had wanted him dead, I would have done it myself."

The witch's voice is curiously lacking her usual vehemence as she says that. She _has_ to say it, because she can't let the vampire think she will turn a blind eye to him killing people right, left and center just because they aren't decent human beings. She cannot afford to play God and decide who is more or less deserving of living, but this time it's exactly what she has done.

She knew there was a chance of Damon killing her teacher and she took a deliberate, drunken decision to look away. This makes her his accomplice, not his jury. But it will be once and never again.

Damon is looking at her and smiling like he knows every thought in her head and every feeling behind her mask. It startles her that might know her mind enough to read her so, when all he has done so far is watch from a distance and provoke her into arguments.

"I didn't do it for you."

"So what, you did it for yourself?"

It's meant to be sarcastic –Bonnie's body language conveys that. Yet Damon nods and beams his most maniacal grin like she is serious.

"Everything I do is for me, myself, and I."

At that reply, the witch stays silent. In a way, she agrees with his argument. Yet, her instincts keep screaming it's just an excuse, and she would trust her instincts over reason any time.

Strangely, her silence has the collateral effect of spurring Damon to talk.

"I didn't like what you said about me that night. It made me angry at you and angrier at myself. I don't want to be that person anymore."

And the most startling thing is she believes him. She can't pinpoint what is convincing her of his sincerity exactly, but she feels his honesty deep in her gut. It warms her.

"How does that tie into killing a high school teacher?"

Damon saunters closer, tugs slightly at her arm for no particular reason. "Because he did what I used to do, albeit with less class, and he did it _to_ _you_. I didn't like that. Because I respect you."

It's strange to be forced to realize that Damon Salvatore out of all people _cares_ about her, whatever this means, but there's no other possible explanation for what he has done or said.

When did it happen?

Bonnie has no idea, and for once it doesn't matter. His hands cup her face on each side, thumbs stroking the skin softly. His touch feels warm, not cold and this is how Bonnie knows she will be all right.

Not because Damon Salvatore cares about her – she saved herself before he ever came into play with his strange gestures of good will. But because despite everything he has done and said, right now, he doesn't feel like a threat.

She is not sorry Rainer is dead – she is relieved, more than anything else, because seeing that creep around was a reminder of something she would prefer never remembering. He was a real monster, lower than filth in her eyes, and she can no more hold his death against Damon than she can hold it against herself.

But right now, right here, she can accept that Damon is not the man he used to be, that he has chosen to be better, not just for Elena but for himself. She can forgive him, let the anger go, because he saw what he used to do for what it was and he was disgusted enough to kill Rainer for it.

And if she can forgive Damon, see past their precedents to let him touch her, and see a future where he might not be her enemy… then she is not broken. She is healing.


	2. Repair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the events occurred in 'Break', Damon has taken it upon himself to discretely watch over Bonnie. Follow their journey as they go from being not quite enemies to friends to something more

Damon Salvatore's life runs in a mad rush of violent passions and decisions embraced on a whim. He had spent decades wallowing in the use and abuse of his vampiric abilities without ever concerning himself with how whatever he did affected others. Human life did not matter to him, because he was no longer human. Human emotions were his plaything because he was no longer a prey to them (except where Katherine and Stefan were concerned). He despised the world and everyone in it, so there was no action of his that was inexcusable, no boundary worthy of being respected.

His idea of love is endless indulgence and limitless dedication – this is what he offered to Katherine and what he liked to imagine that Elena was learning to offer to him (Stefan's annoying presence in the equation notwithstanding).

Right and wrong are concepts he doesn't quite remember clearly – he has been a vampire for so long that he is not completely sure that remembering would help anyway. He is used to living under the dictates of his feelings, and it almost doesn't make a difference that it was Katherine before and is Elena now. He keeps doing what he knows –craving, hungering, envying, and waiting.

It's nearly a safety net, despite how much it can hurt, in this humanity-bound existence he is struggling to embrace again.

Bonnie Bennett is the annoying know-it-all, wannabe-heroine that threatens his right to do anything he likes at any time he fancies. This irritates on his best days and comforts on his worst ones.

His feelings toward her are often ambivalent – he respects her and yet he is annoyed by her very presence, he lusts for her body and blood even while he despises her narrow-mindedness. Her unswerving moral compass is something he envies and resents at once, but mostly he cares for her in ways that don't really require her to return the fondness he feels.

In a world where his charm and pretty excuses wash away every tangible remnant of his actions, Damon often has the sensation that he is becoming less tangible every day. While he has always been fickle and moody, this feeling of losing himself is entirely new. He has spent almost a century trying to become a better Katherine than Katherine, hoping he could both escape the needy, clingy, inconsequential human he used to be and to impress her once he got her free from the damn tomb. Nowadays it feels like he is drowning in this new love for Elena, and while some days it comes like a pleasant, redeeming kind of torture, some others he gets the disorienting impression that he is morphing into a whiney caricature of Stefan.

Generally, he shakes off those unflattering thoughts as soon as his brain formulates them, never having been much of a fan of useless philosophizing, but the feeling of wrongness never quite goes away.

But when he looks deep into Bonnie Bennett's angry, challenging eyes whenever they are forced to interact, he is reminded of everything he has done to her, to those she has loved. In those moments he knows his actions made a real impact on somebody's life, negative as it may be, and he knows he has existed as something more than someone's fantasy.

Maybe this is what endears Bonnie Bennett to him at first.

Either way, he doesn't quite realize he cares about her opinion until she tells him to his face that she thinks he is some serial woman abuser. It hurts him, the indifference in her voice as she slaps him with yet another of her pesky judgments – she says it like it is fact to be taken at face value and no doubt is even possible.

Damon doesn't have any friends, not in the conventional meaning of the word. Elena calls herself his friend during his lucky days, but friendship is not really what they have- there's too little trust, and a bit too much lust. Liz thinks she is his friend, and in some moments Damon likes to remember her that way, but he now knows how she would look at him if she _really_ knew him. And then there's Caroline, who despises him possibly more than he despises her. Jeremy can play nice, but only because he is forced to.

They are all complacent toward him, mostly because they are wary of what he might do if they're not, but the witch is different.

Damon would never call her his friend but he likes being around her, likes her fire and her integrity.

So, when he compels Rainer to not scream and staying put while he cuts him before getting pissed enough to snap his neck, he is doing it as a gift to _her,_ a gift she never asked and would never approve of, but a gift nonetheless. A gift of apology, or maybe a spiteful homage to her honesty where her view of his actions is concerned. Or maybe he is just angry that the moral compass he came to rely on is being messed up by someone so far beneath her station. He doesn't know really, and he doesn't care to find out all that much.

He just enjoys killing the bastard, tearing his limbs apart, reducing his corpse to a bloody mess of entrails he can easily dispose afterwards. It's lucky he was at least careful to drag that gibbering pig among the woods, because cleaning up after his work would be hell otherwise.

* * *

In the following weeks of their truce, Damon looks after the witch. It's not something he decides consciously, but once he starts there's no stopping. He observes her when she convinces Elena to come along with her to a self-defense course, when she drops loose blouses and overflowing skirts in favor of sexier, darker-colored dresses. He watches her as she focuses more on training her powers in her free time, trailing her in his raven form.

He watches her putting back the pieces of her old identity, half-wondering why she is not cracking already.

"I'm not stalking you, I'm checking up on you. In those dire, Klaus-clouded times, it's a sad necessity," he answers condescendingly to her when Bonnie finally corners him, demanding an explanation. Her green cat-like eyes narrow on his and he can feel the thickness of her suspicion on his tongue.

 _What do you want from me?_ –she is wondering, and it feels very different, more personal, than it felt every other time she questioned his actions.

Even her body language is defensive, her mouth tight, and the vampire experiences the full blow of indefinite anxiety coiling in the pit of his stomach.

"I'm not a ticking time bomb, Damon, so spare me any favors."

He forces a smirk at the haughtiness in her tone, pretends to not notice the way she steps back from him, reestablishing a more comfortable distance between their bodies.

"Whatever you say, Judgey."

He does not stop watching her from a distance and she makes very clear that all his apparent affability won't convince her to help him with _anything._

Damon finds her tenacity very amusing, right until the day she waits on her porch, staring straight at the raven flying low over her garden.

"Will you give it a rest?"

"No."

"It won't win you any extra points with Elena. Go harass her if you're bored."

She is pouting so endearingly, scorn all over her severe scowl, that Damon can't take offense at her hostility.

"Even I need a break, little witch."

He doesn't add that Elena doesn't need him – Elena has Stefan, Caroline, Jonathan Gilbert, Jeremy, Alaric and Bonnie to keep a watch on her and it is tiring being told _all the time_ how unnecessary his presence is to her. She is glad enough to have him around, but he is in no way essential to her survival or happiness.

Bonnie has only herself and her powers–Damon knows how it feels and since he is still the only one who knows her small secret, he will keep guarding her. If only because she is the one witch they have and they can't afford losing her.

Bonnie sighs a bit too deeply, shakes her head in a blatant show of exasperation. "I have the kettle boiling. Do you want a cup of tea?" she asks with all sorts of poison laced up in the words, but Damon does a double take all the same.

"Are you _inviting_ me _in_?"

She snorts, rolling her eyes heavenwards. "God, no. But since you're here and insist on staying, you might as well answer a few questions about Emily."

"Bon-Bon, you are such a sentimental, sociable little bird. That's what I like about you."

But he stays. Even if he hates tea. Only because he is curious to see if the witch will really stay out on the porch to share a cup _with him_.

He is half-convinced it's a bluff. It's not, but in the weeks after, he will come by all the same, and they will sit on the porch side to side with whatever concoction Bonnie is in the mood for, chatting of more or less practical things.

* * *

When Caroline suddenly starts treating him like a salvageable human being, Damon understands why right away.

"You _told_ her," he accuses softly but grumpily during one of their tea sessions.

"Yes," she admits blandly, looking down in her cup, like she is thinking hard and working up the nerve to either stay quiet or voice her thoughts. Damon waits her out, knowing it's the only way to know what is going on inside her crafty little head.

"She cried for me," she eventually adds, tasting the statement on her tongue like it was some foreign language.

"She's been known to cry for far less important things."

Bonnie shakes her head, looking contrite. "I know it was not my fault, rationally. But until I saw how angry and upset Caroline was after listening to me, there was some small part of me that felt like I had no right to get emotional over… _it._ I wanted to be stronger than that _._ "

Damon shrugs, looks swiftly away from her earnest, hostility-free gaze. "It wasn't something to be taken lightly."

The young witch nods, then switches subjects abruptly, saying, "You know, I've always been surprised that Tyler didn't hate me at all for my part in Mason's thing."

Actually the real miracle is that Teen Wolf still hangs around their small vampire family after knowing about Damon's offing both his uncle and Vicky.

It took him something like, what, a week of seething resentment before the mutt decided to blame all the ordeal on Damon, sparing Caroline and Stefan completely?

"That's why nobody warned him of your involvement, little bird."

She is so taken aback that she completely forgets reprimanding the vampire for his constant attempts at nicknaming her.

"Oh."

* * *

When Bonnie and Jeremy start to see each other again, Damon is unexplainably put-off from… well, everything in the world.

In fact, he feels so petty that he considers confiding in Elena about Bonnie's little secret ordeal just to gain a few extra points and have his ego stroked by the brunette's fluttering eyelashes – Elena always leaned the most on him when she was upset.

But whenever he tried to really picture the scene, his enjoyment of the fantasy was ruined by his awareness that he could never betray Bonnie on such a fundamental level.

Even if they weren't on properly friendly terms.

He didn't quite understand what he wanted from the witch, but seeing her flirty and relaxed around Jeremy gave him an extremely strange sensation. He is genuinely, profoundly content, that she is visibly beginning to feel better but he is also sad because it means she no longer needs him, and Bonnie was the one person who truly did, at least for a little bit.

So he keeps appearing on her porch, waiting for the day she will pretend to not know he is outside.

It never comes.

* * *

He starts noticing how beautiful Bonnie is when she smiles, when that soft, bright glow seems to radiate from her eyes and face. She is like sunshine, Damon always thinks when he sees it, and even if he has this urge to touch her, to lean in and breathe in her spicy scent, he doesn't give in.

He starts thinking of her before he falls asleep – and not in a sexual way- and notices he's in a better mood whenever he can anticipate seeing her.

He starts _accidentally_ running into her more often around the town, just to have an excuse to spend more time with her.

It's not stalking, he reassures to both her teasing self and his sarcastic excuse for a conscious, it's just a small town in a small world.

But he is irrationally pleased when Alaric gets her stuck with a history project so she can gain a few extra credit points, because it gives Saint Stefan the chance to take the obvious route and offer their library as a source.

Damon grows fond of interrupting her evening study sessions at some point just to bitch about the general sorry state of everybody's existence (and Jeremy's specifically).

Bonnie's threats of bodily harm are all playfulness and sass and she doesn't push his hand away when he gives in to the temptation to pull her very tug-able curls.

In those evenings, Stefan mostly keeps to his room or goes over to Elena's with a smug expression Damon carefully avoids commenting upon.

* * *

Damon hates deep thinking – it never brings him anywhere good, or maybe it always ends badly because he holds on his superficiality until it's unavoidable.

The point is Damon never questioned his feelings for Elena much. He knows he wishes she had been Katherine, that he would die for her in a heartbeat if it's necessary to keep her safe and happy.

He knows he has little memory of living without living for someone else. His existence before Katherine was bland and meaningless and when he had not had her anymore, he switched right away to being all about Elena, so the full weight of being himself never fully fell on his shoulders. He will concede that living for Elena is less painful and demeaning than living for Katherine used to be, and he is grateful to his lovely miss Gilbert for giving a positive meaning to his days. Occasionally, he wondered if his feelings were specific to Elena as a person or if he would have responded the same way to any girl who had treated him the same way Elena had in the same circumstances life had struck them together. He always dismissed the reasoning as ridiculous.

Until spending time with Elena starts to feel different, like some vital component is missing and he cannot, for the life of him, figure out what is wrong with him.

He still loves her but… he cannot avoid the pang of disappointment every time he takes notice that it is _just_ that, _just love_.

Fondness and lust and gratitude mingling into something bittersweet and suddenly so ordinary.

It is nothing like the sense of gut-deep belonging he feels when he is alone with his little witch, that terrifying, exciting feeling of being seen for exactly who he is in his entirety, or that golden contentment of knowing that Bonnie forgave him and wanted him close.

It's not the gravitational pull he has _always_ felt to mess with the witch when they are in physical proximity, nor that desire to touch her and look at her because it still feels so _pure_ despite being so far from her.

* * *

"You've been so distant lately, are you okay?" Elena asks once, pulling him aside, dark eyes searching his face while her hand grasps his arm.

She stands a bit closer than usual, and Damon knows the rules of this game – he should lean close so his nose brushes her forehead, flirt so she will scoff and pull back when all she wants is to press her lips to his and finally find out how it feels.

It used to be exciting, to know he could make Elena want him even if she was so devoted to his brother.

Now it just feels cheap, a barely passable imitation of something that might have been beautiful.

He plays his role to the T anyway: his role is all he has, even if he has always despised everything common and ordinary.

* * *

When her history project is completed, Bonnie keeps coming over to the boarding house.

"I never believed it could become a hobby for me," she jokes with Stefan, "but I admit I became addicted to the allure of old family journals."

The truth, Damon suspects, is that Bonnie is so tired of a daddy who is never around and refuses to meet her eyes when he is that she would prefer to spend her free time in an old house inhabited by vampires.

Especially now that she and Jeremy broke up again.

He feels almost guilty that this very thought makes him feel drunk with glee.

It's hard to think that it's been one year since he and Bonnie called it a real truce and got on their way to inexorably becoming whatever complicated, wonderful mess they are now.

It's been one whole year of being her friend, of getting to know her in ways he never thought he could know another person.

He used to think he was too fucked up to ever love anyone the healthy, happy and yet all-encompassing way.

Bonnie Bennett proved him wrong.

He has never told her, never worked up the nerve of doing anything that could convince her that he is over Elena and so deeply into her he can never recover.

Sometimes Damon feels almost like Bonnie knows anyway because … how could she not?

She, who knows him better than anyone, who sees right through all the bullshit he pulls – how could she fail to see through the façade the time it matters the most?

They are not together, but it feels like she is part of him anyway so she should know, and it frustrates him so much that she holds back like she doesn't understand it.

He can't believe it's been just one year but it is Christmas once more and the Mystic Grill is full of disgustingly tacky red and gold decorations. Mistletoe dangles everywhere that might pass for a doorway, just to hand horny teenagers the perfect excuse to make out with the first person they can grab.

Damon would not mind so much if it did not put him in a rather uncomfortable predicament.

Bonnie is right in front him, an extremely amused expression on her face. She is not eyeing the mistletoe that seems to be mocking them above their heads.

"I never saw you so terrified," she insinuates saucily, tilting her head to one side, a coy smirk on her glossed lips.

Damon shifts his accusatory gaze from the offending branch to her eyes, to her mouth.

Her full, soft-looking, sensually shaped mouth, made all the more shiny by that cherry gloss.

_Tempting._

He smirks back and slinks imperfectly closer. He knows he is posturing far more than necessary but with this witch he never could help it – it was a natural reaction.

"I'll kiss you back if you kiss me first," the vampire challenges, merriment dancing behind his cool eyes.

"Chicken," Bonnie calls him, canting her chin boldly up and pulling at the lapels of his jacket. She leans forward on her tiptoes as his head bends down eagerly to meet her, and then her lips are brushing teasingly over his.

It's the very innocent beginning of a very wicked era.


End file.
